


The Backwards Murder

by Faeymouse



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Dark Comedy, M/M, Other, PTSD, Post-Apocawasn't, Warlock!Sherlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24959872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faeymouse/pseuds/Faeymouse
Summary: “Until the age of eleven I was raised to believe that I was the Antichrist,” Sherlock states without looking up from his phone.John smiles slightly, waiting for the punchline, but when none comes he opens his eyes wide and leans his head to the side like a rabbit that just narrowly missed getting hit with a potshot. “Wait, seriously?”“Very seriously. I even had a demon nanny.”AKAAn AU where BBC Sherlock Holmes was Warlock in the Good Omens universe. Raised believing he was the Antichrist (and of course he noticed, he's Sherlock Holmes), until suddenly one day everyone around him discovered he wasn't. So he decided to become a pirate instead. When that didn't happen, he went with world-renowned detective.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 80





	1. Death At the Door

**Author's Note:**

> This really all happened because my phone decided to correct "warlock" to "Sherlock", and I was like "Well, hot damn that has potential!" Here's the requisite nod-o-the-head to my mobile device. Thanks for the idea.
> 
> Enjoy~

It’s an early morning in their flat like any other, and there’s something not quite right about the third man there.

It takes far longer than it should for a trained soldier to notice him. John patters into the kitchen in pyjamas and slippers, makes a cuppa with what he hopes isn’t the tea that Sherlock has been performing his latest experiments on, and is halfway back to his room when the out-of-place presence registers.

To his credit and that of British Armed Forces training, John doesn’t drop his tea. He certainly considers throwing the piping hot mug straight at the stranger, though.

The man is tall, _looming_ in a way not even Sherlock can manage. He’s in a faded, black leather jacket with something -- _Hell’s Angels_ \-- embroidered on the back in one gigantic patch from shoulder to waist. John’s eyes travel up from it to the man’s head. More appropriately, where the man’s heads _should_ be. In its place is a riding helmet of slippery black plastic, polished and shiny, with the visor pushed up to the top. He’s looking as intently at the skull Sherlock keeps on the mantelpiece as John is looking at him. 

John inhales deeply and channels his old drill sergeant voice. 

“Who’re you, then?”

The man doesn’t twitch or give a start. Instead, he turns with all the careful care of someone that has just been asked a question that requires them to pull out earbuds. As if he’d known John was there all along and simply been politely ignoring him. He turns, and the face beneath the visor is no face at all. It’s as near a reflection of the skull on the mantelpiece as two skulls could be, down to the sutures and foramina in the yellowed bone.

HELLO.

John most definitely hears a voice, but it’s less a proper sound and more the perception of it, like remembering old conversations. It’s an echo in his mind, loud, low, and far too reminiscent of what happens when one stands too close to a bomb going off or a gun being fired and can’t hear anything but the echoing ring of temporary tinnitus. John looks down into the contents of his mug, and then back up.

“Er, hi.”

IS HE HERE?

John presses his lips together and clicks his tongue against his teeth. “You mean Sherlock? I can check. Name?”

AN OLD FRIEND. The man inclines his head. TO YOU BOTH.

John forces out a tight smile at that. “Right. Be back, one moment.”

He doesn’t exactly sprint to Sherlock’s door, but there is definitely a bit of tripping and a few

muttered curses as drops of hot tea splash onto hands involved. John doesn’t bother to knock before pushing the bedroom door open.

The bedroom is dark and quiet, the only sound John’s feet as they slide across the carpet.

“Sherlock!” he hisses.

In the center of the room is the bed, and in the center of the bed is a mound. John gives it a shove. It shifts. A pale hand and then a pale blue eye can suddenly be seen creeping out from its depths.

“Jnngh?”

John holds up his mug. “Did you do something to my tea again?”

The eye opens and closes at him slowly, and the answer takes longer than John cares for. He’s fairly sure he hears the telltale sound of Sherlock sniffing the air.

“Nngh.”

“Well then, that means there’s most definitely someone to see you in the living room,” John says. “Get up.”

The eye squints. The blankets and sheets of the mound shift to reveal a mouth. “Who?”

“Wouldn’t say. Just called himself an old friend to us both. Oh, and he has a skull for a face.”

Sherlock considers this with all the wherewithal of the half-asleep. “Are you high?”

“No. Are _you_?”

“Not nearly enough for this.”

The mouth and the eye and the hand disappear and the mound rolls over. Placing his mug carefully on the nightstand, John grips the blanket and sheets with both hands and gives them a not-so-careful tug. The mass of long pale limbs that is Sherlock Holmes curls in on themselves at the sudden touch of cold air. His hair is an even fiercer maelstrom than usual as he jerks his head up and scowls at John.

“I was _thinking_ ,” he snapped.

“You were _sleeping_ ,” John replied. “Go on, get up. Client in the sitting room.” He glances down and back up. “You might want to remember trousers this time.”

Sherlock grumbles and sits up against his headboard, running both hands through his hair. 

“I didn’t hear the door.”

“Neither did I.”

Sherlock crooks his brows at him. “No door. Mrs. Hudson?”

John shakes his head. “She could be asleep.”

“Or dead.”

_“Sherlock.”_

“It’s a possibility,” Sherlock reasons as he fishes on the other side of the bed for a pair of rumpled pyjama bottoms. He pulls them on without leaving the bed, then does the same with a dark blue robe. “Skull for a face, you said? Was there a leather jacket, too? Hell’s something-or-other?”

“Yeah. Don’t tell me you actually know whoev-- _whatever_ that out there is?”

“Just might,” Sherlock smiles. “Stranger in the flat. Didn’t hear the door, or Mrs. Hudson. Rather dangerous circumstances for one to wake up to. So!” Sherlock springs up from the bed, all pretense of sleepiness gone. His eyes were blazing with excitement. “Let’s meet it head on, shall we, John?”

**~*~**

John half hoped there would be no one in the sitting room, but sure enough the skull-faced man is still there. Except now he’s sitting in one of the armchairs, doing the closest approximation of reading the morning paper that something without eyeballs could possibly do.

John had left his mug of tea in Sherlock’s room, but he still finds himself asking in a terse whisper, “You’re _sure_ you didn’t do anything to my tea?”

“Positive.” Sherlock is only half aware that he’s responding at all, his gaze zeroed in on the man in the armchair with pupils blown wide with curiosity, and -- John can’t be sure, though frankly he isn’t sure of anything at the moment aside from “what” and “the” and “hell” -- the stranger folds the paper down and stares right back.

FALSE ONE.

Sherlock smiles, moving closer and throwing himself into the armchair opposite the stranger. He even scoots it closer, and rests his elbows on his knees like an excited child on their birthday. 

John comes to stand behind his chair. “ That’s one I haven’t heard in a while.”

DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?

Sherlock snorts again, looking vaguely insulted. “Do you think it isn’t obvious?”

APPARENTLY NOT.

Sherlock steeples his fingers beneath his chin. “The who doesn’t matter as much as the why in this instance, Azrael. Have you come to kill me?” He adds, far too giddily. John tenses, and wishes he’d kept the mug with him for possible throwing purposes. He considers going to fetch it, or something a tad more dangerous, but when he starts to move Sherlock cuts in. “No need, John. We’re safe.”

YOU SEEM TO BELIEVE THAT, the stranger says icily.

“Oh, no. I know it,” Sherlock says, and tilts his head. “What would cause someone like you to come to me about a missing person?”

Unlike earlier, the stranger does twitch in surprise at this. Not the twitch of a normal man; it’s as if his entire being flickers out of existence for a moment before realigning.

HOW DO YOU-

“Death doesn’t escape someone like you, but life most certainly can,” Sherlock continues, with a touch of boredom in his voice. “Hm. Not the usual near-death experience, I’d wager. Otherwise

I’m sure you have...lackeys. This one must be a mystery. So tell me, who was it? What did they do?”

The man -- or being as John was beginning to think of them as with much more ease -- rose from their seat like stormclouds rising over the horizon. They flexed their massive gloved fingers, and thundered. THEY TRIED TO KILL ME.


	2. Death is in the Details

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important notice time! There will be no update next Sunday. My birthversary is this week, but with the ever so great combo of COVID and being an essential worker, celebration of it completely slipped my mind. Regular updates will resume after that. Thanks, all.

Sherlock places his palms together and holds them against his lips, bisecting the smile that creeps up there.

The stranger remains rooted to the spot, clearly expecting more than a simple smile. The energy and power emanating from them moments before dissipates, stormclouds torn apart by light winds.

DOES IT NOT INTEREST YOU? They finally demand.

“I’d say it’s the most interesting thing you’ve ever done,” Sherlock replied candidly, leaning back in his armchair.

SO YOU WILL TAKE THE CASE?

The stranger steps forward, and John instinctively reaches for a gun at his hip that isn’t there. He flexes his fingers and forces them to rest against the soft material of his pyjama pants. He’s surprised at himself; he’s good in stressful situations, brilliant in them, even. Yet something about this strange visitor acts like a Pied Piper to all of his old demons, pulling them out of those deep places within himself he’d thought them lost in for good. He swallows against a dry tongue and parched throat. His mouth tastes like sand and desert heat, and he swears the stranger is looking more at him than at Sherlock.

He should’ve kept the tea.

Evidently, Sherlock can tell the same. He clears his throat and stands, snapping both John and the stranger’s attention upwards as he blocks their views of one another.

“We shall need certain assurances, of course,” Sherlock says, attempting to sound as disinterested as possible while his eyes dance around merrily and his smile won’t go away. “I’d prefer to know that if we die in this endeavor, it shall simply end there.”

“And payment,” John adds, because one of them has to. His mind starts to mull over what Sherlock could possibly mean by “simply end there”, but his thoughts are slow to follow one another, getting stuck like boots in quelching bog mud.

“And I’ll require their present locations,” Sherlock continues. “You do know where your cohorts are, don’t you?”

The empty-eyed sockets stare at him as the incorporeal voice remains pointedly silent. Sherlock narrows his own eyes at the stranger much like he often does with the skull he keeps on the mantelpiece.

John wonders how he can remain so frightfully indifferent to what quickly felt like mounting danger in John’s gut. It felt as though an invisible crosshair was floating over his vitals, just waiting for the moment to open fire. John tightens his jaw unintentionally, grinding molars against one another.

The silence persists, until Sherlock throws his hands up in the air petulantly. “Oh come on,” he carps. “It’s no fun at all when no one asks how I knew it.”

YOU ARE A STRANGE ONE.

“False One. Strange One. I personally prefer the smart one. Now, do tell me before I grow bored and leave you to sort it out yourself.”

I HAVE REIGNED THE OTHER RIDERS TO LONDON. HERE THEY SHALL REMAIN UNTIL I… The sentence peters off into nothing, before regaining itself with force. UNTIL YOU SOLVE THIS MYSTERY, AND I TAKE CARE OF THE CULPRIT MYSELF.

“Or culprits,” Sherlock says. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain the details of your perilous predicament with your very own Horse--” The sentence doesn’t so much as slow to a stop as slam on the brakes hard enough to give itself whiplash. Sherlock’s mouth hangs slightly open, eyes glazed over.

John breaks his own stillness to rush over to him.

“Sherlock?” he says, snapping fingers in front of the vacant eyes. No response. If he had been in a quiet panic before, now it swept through him like a wave. He grabs at Sherlock and shakes him. “Sherlock!” He rounds on the stranger next. This has to be their doing, somehow. Someway. “What the bloody hell did you do to him?”

I AM TELLING HIM THE DETAILS. A tilt of the helmeted head, almost curious. YOU WOULD BE WISE NOT TO SPEAK TO ME THIS WAY. FALSE THOUGH HE MAY BE, HE IS FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU.

John rankles at that. “I’ve never been the wise sort.”

YOU WOULD DO WELL TO CHANGE THAT.

Then, an exhalation of breath next to John. He looks back at Sherlock to find his expression normal, his mouth closed and eyes blinking rapidly. One of Sherlock’s hands finds John’s and gives it a quick and careful pat to get it to stop gripping the front of his robe. John disengages himself with a muttered half-apology, stuffing his hands into his armpits and waiting for his heart rate to settle.

Sherlock takes a step closer to the stranger, wobbles for less than a second before straightening himself. “I could get used to that sort of transfer of information. How efficient!” His eyes alight on the stranger with a newfound knowledge. “Fine. Alright. Time limit, got it. And what of our assurances?”

John expects they must be having another silent exchange (his mind only half rebels at the thought; the rest of it is utterly preoccupied with not diving straight into an unnecessary fight or flight response), but then with a full-faced twitch of annoyance, Sherlock turns his back on the stranger. He strides to one side of the room and back. John gives him a look of utter dumbfoundment as he passes by his right side. How anyone could turn their back on a client like this is beyond him.

I CAN OFFER **_YOU_ ** PLENTY, the stranger says, and while the tone remains constant reverberating in John’s head, something about it insists that something is being left unsaid. John can’t put his finger on it. Frankly, at the moment he couldn’t put his finger on anything. He knows the eyes of those skulls are looking at him again, and his shoulder begins to ache like he’s carrying some great weight.

Sherlock is midway between the both of them, staring thoughtfully out into space. John also has the feeling Sherlock’s attention is on him, even if his eyes are not.

“I’ll have to make do, then,” Sherlock murmurs softly. That quiet is quickly replaced with sound when he snaps it in half with a sharp clap. “Very well. Tell me where they are,” his gaze slips towards John, and what must be a horrendously obvious look of discomfort, because he adds without looking away and gesturing vaguely in the direction of the mantelpiece, “but write them down this time. Put them there, then leave, and do try not to kill any houseplants on your way out. John.”

John is only half aware when Sherlock says his name. He feels queasy and lightheaded, and god, his shoulder _aches_. He knows Sherlock’s interest in their visitor has floundered and died, because he leaves the room without a backwards glance, grasping John’s arm and pulling him out along with him. John lets out a sharp breath when he does, as the pain drills deep into the meat of his shoulder. It reverberates around his clavicle all the way through to his shoulder blade. It’s a terribly familiar pain.

“Easy, John,” Sherlock says, as close to a helpful bedside manner as John knows him capable of. It’s quite decent, actually, which means something must be really wrong with him.

Sherlock leads them both up the short flight of stairs into John’s room - the one that also happens to be the furthest possible point from the flat’s living room without outright leaving it - and closes the door behind them. He maneuvers John to the unmade bed, and leaves him there to start rummaging through drawers.

“First aid kit?” he asks.

John makes a face, tries to stand, and then gives up when the world decides to spin around him for the attempt. He puts a hand to his head, taking a few deep breaths before moving it down to clutch at his shoulder. “Why do we need that exactly?”

As he says it, John takes his hand away. It feels wet, had he been sweating? He looks at the palm, at the swath of bright red painting the pale flesh.

“Because I’m afraid you need it, ” Sherlock says, calmly.

“Oh.” John stares at his palm glinting crimson in the early morning light, and keeps on staring. And staring. He blinks once, slowly and deliberately, and tears his eyes away from it up at Sherlock. “We never confirmed payment.”

Sherlock chuckles, and manages to find the first aid kit on his own. He moves back over to John and kneels in front of him. “Right. I’ll be sure t--”

John doesn’t catch the rest. He’s never been the squeamish sort when it comes to blood, his or another’s, but when a years’ old bullet wound that nearly killed him begins to bleed anew out of the blue? That’ll do it.

He’s rather glad he’s on the bed when he passes out.


End file.
